The Dream Teller

The dreams saturated her entire being, she could smell the dirt walls of the basement where two boys were kept bound together until the smaller one died of starvation. She could see the bright red fabric on the Chinese dragon twisting and twirling gracefully against the clear blue sky, like a ballet, as it carried explosives towards a boat full of people. She could hear a mother’s lament, wailing in despair, looking on the bodies of her eight dead children in the countryside, next to a babbling brook. All the dreams had one thing in common: death. Each telling held a soul claimed by the darkness. The dreams were stories told by the dead, the history of those murdered.

Her name was Elizabeth Stride, she was a dream ‘see-er’. Some thought she had a morbid curiosity. The truth was the morbid had a curiosity with her. It started when she was thirteen, she would wake in the middle of the night screaming, out of breath in a cold sweat. Night terrors the doctors called it. The doctors didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t have believed her if she told them that during these ‘night terrors’ she saw things. Like a movie reel was playing in her head. Except the characters in the movies knew she was watching them. They were watching her too. There were things they wanted her to know.

Twenty years after she started seeing, she remembered every dream, every story. Hundreds of them banging around inside her mind, nagging at her, begging to come out, leaking through the seams of her existence. Terrifying memories imprinted on her. Elizabeth felt the emotions of the dream ‘teller's’. She had always thought of the owners of the dreams as the ‘tellers’ and she was the ‘see-er’. Her job was to see and hear them without judgement. While the tellers scared her, at least at first, she came to care for them.

One fall evening Elizabeth was sitting on the dock of her home on Lake Roesiger, an hour north of Seattle. She loved the bright red of the fall leaves surrounding the lake. The water was dark, the sound of it splashing against the wood comforted her. A heavy fog moved in with the night sky settling over the lake like a blanket, leaving the stars above to provide pinpricks of light across the water. The scenery brought back feelings, and memories that did not belong to her.

There was a dream that played in her head over and over for fifteen years, like it happened yesterday. The lake carried her back to that dream. The dream wouldn’t let go of her. It was obsessed with telling her, it had to tell her, and she had to get it out of her head, out where others could know it. The dead wanted to be heard. This dream teller was very loud, and persistent. It was this story Elizabeth decided she had to write down. The teller’s soul would not rest until the story was witnessed.

Elizabeth walked back to her cozy two-bedroom house and put on a teapot. She pulled her leather chair out from her teak writing desk and sat down in front of a laptop. A hand knit throw blanket lay across the back of her chair, which she wrapped herself in. Then she started typing.

The words came out like machine gun fire, faster than she could type them. Quickly, she recounted each scene of the dream as it played out inside her head like a film playing in front of her. The teapot started to whistle. Elizabeth tried to pull away to go to the kitchen she wanted to stop the noise, but she was driven to sit back down. She had to type. She had to get it out. With the angry tea kettle screaming in the background Elizabeth wrote:

The dream teller was a sixteen-year-old girl with blonde hair and a beautiful smile. The year was 1967. The story starts at night, a black sky filled with a moon that glowed like a lighthouse warning ships to keep away from the shore. Warm summer air carried a fevered breeze, the sound of crickets playing a symphony in the background.

Two cars were joyriding down a narrow dirt road. A wheat field was on the right side and a row of tall green trees far behind it. The car in the lead was a red convertible Mustang. The top down, windows open, the dream teller rode in the passenger seat of the Mustang with her hand stretched out the right side, brushing against the wheat as it blew and rustled. Next to her was a dark haired boy with a red and white football jacket, he was whooping and hollering -excited noises. The car behind them carried a group of boisterous teens laughing and yelling. They were all together, drinking and partying.

Both cars drove to the end of the wheat field and took a hard right towards the Folsom Lake boat launch. A large white 1960 motor yacht greeted them, glowing with light like a swarm of fireflies inside the belly of a monster floating on the lake. The teenagers loaded their belongings onto the boat. As the teller walked along the side deck of the boat towards the warmly lit door of the cabin, she was bright-eyed, smiling, immersed in conversation with another girl in the party.

It was getting late, the temperature dropped putting a chill in the air. Thick fog quietly crept over the lake. Finally, the boat left the dock. The teller was with the dark-haired boy in the football jacket. They were standing together on the deck as the boat motored further onto the lake. He was behind her with his arms around her waist, she leaned back into him. Her head was laying against his chest, her eyes closed, her lips turned up in the corners, not so much a slight smile as contentment.

The next scene showed the teller alone, immersed in the cold water of the lake, surrounded by the thick dense fog. The frigid water against her skin, it felt like ice in her veins. The lake was silent except for the lapping of the waves.

The teller was face down, unconscious, her body bobbing up and down, with the rhythm of the current. Her blonde hair was completely soaked. Suddenly the teller pulled her head out of the water gasping for air. She looked around, her eyes wide, in disbelief, mascara running down her cheeks, she started to cry, then she started to sob in anguish, hysteria coursing through her.

“How did I get here? They left me.” She whispered into the silent lake.

The teller looked around the lake and could see the warm lights on houses off in the distance through the curtain of fog, but she couldn’t swim to them. She couldn’t move towards them. She was frozen where she was. For ten years the teller never left that spot, in Folsom Lake, in the cold, confused and surrounded by mist as though that night never ended. She relived her own wretched fate every over and over.

This story replayed in the see-er’s mind from the very beginning in the car beside the wheat field up to this moment with the teller in the water. The see-er did not communicate to the teller that she was dead, that was not the role of the see-er. The see-er could speak to the dead but she did so with caution, the see-er was only to observe and make sure the teller felt heard. The teller had to become aware of what had befallen her, in her own time.

One day the dream revealed more. Still in the lake, the teller started to remember that night on the yacht. With a deafening panic, she saw herself falling into the water, her lungs filling, her nose and mouth covered, no air was allowed entry, the pain in her chest as her lungs burst and heart stopped. With a sickening blow of horror, she understood that she was dead. For another five years the teller remained in the freezing lake, enveloped in fog, grieving her own death.

A ringing took over inside her mind, it was all she could hear. She could no longer listen to the waves lapping around her, just the ringing. The blindfold was being removed, soon she would be able to see more.

The see-er started to feel a tremendous anger, but it was not her anger, it was the teller’s anger. The see-er understood the teller knew someone murdered her. Like a veil that lifted, the teller would become aware of what she was ready to know, but she did not know everything, not just yet.

There was something just beyond the teller’s grasp of memory, she almost knew who did this to her, but she could not quite see it. The last thing the teller saw was going into the water with such force that she hit her head against the side of the boat before her body met the water. The teller became more and more agitated, she was angry. Fiercely angry at having her life stolen from her.

Now this was the dream see-er’s only thought: falling into the water and feeling sheer despair. A bloodied body left in the waves.

Elizabeth broke away from her writing session, her head pounding from the noisy kettle. She wanted to relieve the dream teller of her anger. She poured out the poor drowned soul’s sadness onto paper convinced it would let the teller find peace. After fifteen years Elizabeth knew the pain of the teller’s story, she felt it. The teller was just a character in a story as far as anyone else was concerned, but Elizabeth knew the teller was real. Elizabeth breathed life into the teller’s soul with each typed word, slowly unleashing a power that she was unaware she possessed.

The universe sparked and buzzed with energy flickering like atoms tightly packed together, vibrating to create a solid entity, the teller and the see-er’s energy was drawn together, with an explosive outcome: The teller became strong enough to be seen. She no longer lived only in the see-er’s memory. The teller became a spirit manifested into existence in the physical world, but she was not fully who she was before.

She was not a sweet sixteen-year-old girl, beautiful and full of hope as Elizabeth had seen her over and over again for fifteen years. The teller’s murder had consumed her hope and replaced it with vengeance. Trapped in a bleak haze of white, wet and alone, she was starved of the opportunities life once offered. Her mind became distorted, her appearance transformed. Once glowing bronze skin turned white and wrinkled. Bouncy blonde hair was now gray and thin. Her stunning blue eyes turned black, haunted and deranged.

A day passed. Elizabeth thought about her writing session the night before. She sat down for a movie with a large glass of wine, wrapped up in a soft blanket. The wind whipped outside cracking branches against the side of the house. Rain pelted the roof which she found a comforting sound between the crackling of the fireplace.

Elizabeth could not focus on the movie and the wine did not numb her as usual. She thought after writing the teller’s story she too would feel some relief. Instead, she felt something else, she could not quite put her finger on it. An ill omen was in the air.

At bedtime she turned on her tabletop waterfall fountain. White noise. The sound of the water dripping over the rocks melted her down deep into her bed. The light from her phone charger reflected the movement from the fountain onto the ceiling like blue waves above her head. Dancing like water on the ceiling as though she was blissfully at the bottom of the sea with no emotional connection to the world. She fell into a deep sleep.

At 3:00 a.m. as with most nights Elizabeth awoke after receiving a dream from a teller who was just a child. Those were the dreams that left her exhausted, obsessively thinking about their story. Faintly, Elizabeth could hear water dripping, it was not the water from her tabletop fountain. It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. Leaving the warmth of her down comforter she slid into her robe and slippers. She had probably left the faucet on just enough to allow a small leak to occur, she thought.

Elizabeth walked through the house barely able to see. The sky was dark outside providing no moonlight. The bulb under the microwave had burned out, she forgot to replace it. That was the light she normally left on as a nightlight in the house. She stumbled putting her hands out feeling for the wall where the light switch lived.

Elizabeth walked several paces when she felt something wet under her foot. Some type of liquid was on the carpet, soaking through her slipper. She cringed suddenly smelling a scent like vinegar.

“What is going on?!” She said to herself, waving her arms out in front of her searching for a way to light the room.

She tripped over something and fell over forward, landing on top of something large, flaccid and slightly warm. Whatever it was, it wasn’t moving or making any sound. Repulsed, she pulled her body away.

“Holy shit! Oh my God! Ewww.” Elizabeth cried out.

Is that an animal? She wondered, now on her feet and frantically searching for the light switch. How would an animal get inside her house? Finally, the hard plastic switch appeared beneath her fingers. Flipping it on with urgency she turned to look behind her, and she cried out, a blood curdling scream.

On her dining room floor lay a bloated man, his skin was gray, and his head and neck were covered in blood. His still body showed no sign of breath. The floor around him was covered in blood and water. There was a note on top of him:

See-er

A gift for you. Next time you dream I’ll show you.

The Girl in the Lake

“No...no, this can’t be.” Elizabeth mumbled.

Elizabeth took the note and put it in a drawer and called the police. It was a frenzied night with police all over the inside of her home. A Detective took her statement and provided her the information that the seventy-three-year-old man found bludgeoned to death in her home was David Johnson. A Real Estate broker from California. He was soaked in water. The forensic lab was testing it. Elizabeth had a feeling she knew what type of water it was.

The police didn’t find any evidence that Elizabeth knew him, they took DNA samples both hers and the victims. She was aware the police would remain curious about her until another explanation surfaced, she prayed one would come to light since no one would believe a spirit did this.

Elizabeth left for a hotel carrying a bottle of Xanax in her purse. Cleaners were scheduled to come into her house in the morning and she couldn’t be there until they were done. Once safely in her room, she chased a Xanax down with a glass of wine. It was already three in the morning. She had to try and get some sleep.

That next morning Elizabeth sat straight up in bed at 6:00a.m. The teller, the girl in the lake had come to her. Elizabeth got her laptop and started writing furiously:

After a night of drinking and fun with friends, the teller was with the boy in the red and white football jacket on the deck of the boat in the middle of Folsom Lake. The teller turned to the dark-haired boy and said:

“I have some news for you.”

“What could you possibly want to tell me? Does it have anything to do with that cheerleading uniform you brought with you?” He asked smiling.

“Actually, this is a bit hard to say.... but I’m pregnant.” The teller said.

The dark-haired boy backed away from her. He looked like he’d just been slapped. His mouth open and his brows furrowed.

“I’m going to college-I told you that. You’re going to have to get rid of it.” He said, telling her not asking her.

“I can’t do that! I thought you’d be happy, at least not this upset.” The teller said.

The argument led to pushing and shoving. He was furious, she was ruining his life. She was hurt that he would leave her to ‘take care of’ the situation on her own. The dark-haired boy suddenly grabbed her and threw her violently over the side of the boat. He could see her face down with blood coming off her head as the yacht motored away. The dark-haired boy’s name was David Johnson.

Then Elizabeth took pause. Her fingers did not want to stop typing but she willed them to. It was imperative that she corrected the ending of this story to capture the soul she unleashed. She typed:

That spot in Folsom Lake is where the teller would stay for the rest of her days. Floating in a sea of her own rage. The lake would forever be haunted by this desolate soul, with no hope of escaping her fate.

The energy in the universe looped back sparking a disconnection from the see-er’s energy and the teller’s, the girl in the lake. The teller would no longer be strong enough to remain in the physical world and the see-er made it so. That night Elizabeth slept soundly until 3:00 a.m. In her dreams came a dark-haired boy in a red and white football jacket.

“Hello see-er.” He smiled.